Nintendo Reveals Wii U Sales Numbers for December

Now that we’ve put a nice little bow on and said au revoir to 2012, Nintendo has sought fit to reveal official sales numbers for the Wii U through its release last November. While Michael Pachter and a few other analysts had suggested sales for the Wii U (in terms of units) were around 600,000+ for the month of December, we know now that the Wii U only moved 460,000 during that very important month.

Moreover, the Wii U has now sold 890,000 units in total in the United States — a decent total considering it has been on the market for only 41 days. As well, Nintendo was pleased to announce Wii U hardware sales have generated more than $300 million in the U.S. alone, a $30 million bump from where the Wii was at during the same point in its lifecycle.

It’s also important to note, though, that the Wii U carries a significantly higher price tag — especially for the Deluxe Version — so evaluate that comparison with a grain of salt. In fact, we know that during the month of December the Wii sold 475,000 units — 15,000 more than the Wii U — but there was also a nationwide shortage for the console, whereas the Wii U was still pretty easy to find in some major metropolitan areas — even if Nintendo had been saying it was selling out everywhere.

However, Wii U hardware sales aren’t the most important part of Nintendo’s potential success story, they actually need to be selling games in order to turn a profit. Unfortunately, as the NPD sales numbers reveal, software sales for the Wii U are still “well behind launch levels for the original Wii and GameCube in December.”

New Super Mario Bros. U has been selling well, though, and carries an attach rate of almost 65 percent. Mario Bros. is the only title that Nintendo called out, but it makes sense that should be the biggest seller for the console.

In all reality it’s New Super Mario Bros. U, Nintendo Land (which comes with the Deluxe Version), and ZombiU that have caught most gamers attention, with the rest of the console’s launch line-up being ports of multiplatform titles.

Nevertheless no one, especially Nintendo, is ready to count the Wii U out yet; we have yet to see what exciting new titles the publisher plans to offer anyway. It’s just a little interesting to look at sales numbers for comparison’s sake.

Do you think Nintendo should be worried about hardware or software sales for the Wii U? Are the majority of gamers waiting for a must-have title or to see what next-gen brings?